The Canadian dilemma is not lack of a means of change, but the will as individuals to use the means. Instead, individuals forego their character and power, to emerge as a voter of convenience, relying on a party system to control the means of social change. The economic restraints and cutbacks that decrease instead of maintain or increase essential social services like health care and education, are indicators of social decline. Any and all votes to return a sitting party to parliament dismantle all that is social.

What effect has party organization had on the individual and on government? The domination of the party gives no real opportunity to the individual: originality is crushed; the aim of all party organization is to turn out a well-running vote machine. The party is not interested in men but in voters -- an entirely different matter. Party organization created artificial majorities, but gave to the individual little power in or connection with government. The basic weakness of party organization is that the individual gets his significance only through majorities. Any method which looks to the fulfilment of the individual through the domination of majorities is necessarily not only partial but false. The present demand that the nation shall have the full power of the individual is the heaviest blow that party organization has ever received.

Now consider, on the other hand, what party organization has done for the government. The powers of government moved steadily to political bosses and business corporations. Boss-rule, party domination and combinations of capital filled in the gaps in the system of government we inaugurated in the eighteenth century. The marriage of business and politics, while it has been the chief factor in entrenching the party system, was the outcome of that system, or rather it was the outcome of the various unworkabilities of our official government. The expansion of big business, with its control of politics, evasion of law, was inevitable; we simply had no machinery adequate to our need, namely, the development of a vast, untouched continent. The urge of that development was an overwhelming force which swept irresistibly on, carrying everything before it, swallowing up legal disability, creating for itself extra-legal methods. We have now, therefore, a system of party organization and political practice which subverts all our theories. Theoretically, the people have the power, but really the government is the primaries, the conventions, the caucuses. Officials hold from the party. Party politics became corrupt because party government was irresponsible government. The insidious power of the machine is due to its irresponsibility. [2]

The Canadian legacy has less to do with similarities to British or American political and economic operation, but instead understates the fact that the foregoing observations are more than a century old, more evident now than ever before, and the will to change neutered by rhetoric and convenience of party vote machines. Nevertheless, The power of the individual to shape the course of history may be one of the most underdeveloped of all natural resources. [3]

Simply put the only way to empower individuals, to restore social development, to demand economic accountability is to vote for a change, not once, but each and every time. Federally, it means to vote for any candidate that is not Liberal. This has nothing to do with whether or not a Liberal candidate is better than the rivals, but whether or not democracy is a function of the individual or the party. The ballot-box is one of the few ways remaining for individuals to demand party competition for the benefit of the people instead of accepting party policy divorced from public interest.

[1]Burke, Edmond. Elizabeth Knowles, Ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, 1999. p. 163 [14].

[2] Follett, Mary Parker. "Growth of Democracy in America" (Chapter XX). The New State. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. p. 166. http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Mary_Parker_Follett/XX.txt

[3] Hack, B. "Moving Toward Sustainable Development." https://cirf-hub.ca/PEC/pdf_files/Eco-eco1.pdf